Thokod sighed as he walked quickly through the halls of the palace on the lowest circle of Hell. The silence around him was only being broken by the occasional sound of his clawed feet scraping the floors with each step, a sound he hated almost as much as the idea of wearing shoes. The predicament currently plaguing him gave the devil no rest as he approached the throne room, every devil he passed along the way stopping to salute him.

“Idiots” He thought to himself, his disappointment in the infernal legions only growing with each salute.

“Morons, every one of them. They couldn’t tell their creator from their ass if it jumped off and farted” he lamented, strolling into the throne room and taking a seat at his place.

A quivering legionary devil approached almost immediately and began reading a report of the recent contracts that had proved most profitable, and the infernal efforts to quell the divine war. Before this subordinate had a chance to finish however, Thokod took a deep breath and mustered the loudest most regal shout he could manage.

“EVERYONE OUT!”

A cry that sent the devils around him scrambling over each other to escape whatever potential Ire the ‘Lord of Hell’ might inflict if they ignored his orders.

With a wave of his hand Thokod summoned a mirror in front of him and spent several minutes eyeing his visage in the mirror. Staring right back at him was the only face he held any loyalty for, and it wasn’t even his own. As the first born Pit Fiend Thokod had power and status unmatched by any others in hell, he was an evolved Arch-Devil after all. That status being unmatched did not mean it wasn’t exceeded though, and his lord and master was the only one that stood above him, the only one worthy of such a spot.

Vazotz, The Lord of Hell, King of All Devils, The Crimson Prince, and many other titles, was quite literally a god. He created the devils after claiming hell for his own, and spent a surprisingly short time with them that had still managed to instill unwavering loyalty among his first generation.

That same loyalty was the reason Thokod was currently pretending to be his master and keep the infernal court running. He had been ordered to. Vazotz had enacted a plan shortly before the birth of the first generation of devils that came to fruition shortly after, and that plan currently saw him predisposed from his hellish duties for the ten thousandth year in a row.

All of the Arch-Devils knew of this, and were working to keep things running in his absence. Thokod had king duty today, but it was not always this bad. Sometimes he just had to lead an incursion or two on the mortal world to contribute to the on-going divine war.

A war he only participated in out of respect for his ‘father’.

He’d seen the memories of his master held in the vaults beneath the palace, most of the Arch-Devils spent their time on king duty reliving aspects of their master’s life in a hope to feel close to him and view his greatness. This meant several of them had a great deal of insight into his life as god before he had claimed hell and given them life, and could with a significant amount of accuracy predict what he would do in a given situation.

A situation like a divine war for example.

Vazotz was born among the gods, and by their standards he was actually one of the older ones. He would actually have been the fourteenth of the thirteen high gods if he was worshipped by mortals, he was born before any of the more specific gods came into existence. The difference between him and the rest of the pantheon though, was a lack of domain. Vazots had been born alongside the gods of Light, Darkness, Life, and Death, but had not received a domain to rule over from whatever primordial force created him. He had fully intended to seek out and claim a domain that would fit his power and allow him to stand beside his siblings as a fully recognized god, but seemingly before he’d had the chance the pantheon had exploded in number.

Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

High Gods now had subordinate Lesser Gods, and a few Lesser Gods had sprung up independently to claim domains like Magic, Law, and Art. Lesser Gods soon then had subordinate DemiGods, and in turn Heroic Gods, by the time Divine spirits had been created to serve as subordinates to the Heroic Gods, there were more than one hundred divine beings in the newly formed pantheon.

Vazotz had still not claimed a domain.

Having to fight and scrape and claw against the raw energies of the universe to claim a portion of it for himself had made Vazotz rather bitter. Once he successfully became King of Hell he actually spent several years just ruling the pit of hellbeasts without doing anything else. It was the status and significance that was important to him.

He was king of the worst portion of the universe, a hole filled with torment and despair that swallowed souls of the damned and spat back out feral beasts, but him-dammit he Vazotz was KING.

This fueled his desire to create devils and have subjects to both worship him and serve him, the other gods had given rise to mortal races that revered them and prayed to them, and many of them had subordinates out the ass to do whatever they needed. Just being king wasn’t enough to stand beside them, and Vazots quickly decided he wanted to stand above them.

As intimately familiar with this attitude as he was, Thokod knew that his master would not pass up a chance to prove himself to his siblings, less so if he thought he could gain something at the same time.

So the infernal legions marched to war and began fighting off Extras at every opportunity, claiming a few mortal souls here and there to make more devils, but genuinely trying to contribute to the effort.

Or ‘out-contribute’ in this case.

There was no way in hell that the weaker gods were contributing much at all, so the infernal legions only had to motivate their inherently selfish soldiers to do a bit more than that. After all, how is the Goddess of Rain or the God of Books supposed to use their power to fight a war?

That was the initial plan anyway, many of the other gods had started sending envoys to hell to ask for aid at specific battles, or in some cases demand it. The presence of an angel in hell did not do much for their case thankfully.

It only further demonstrated how little the rest of the pantheon knew or cared about this corner of reality, and all of them were promptly declined, even if a few were sent back missing a wing or covered in boiling acid. It's not like an angel could die in hell anyway, you had to kill them in the realm their soul was in, same rule for devils.

Theoretically, if you used a portal to move the angel’s soul body to hell you could kill them very easily, but that was beyond the efforts or desires of anyone in hell at present.

Several days passed before Thokod’s king duty was over, and he was soon relieved very discreetly by another, albeit slightly different, projection of Vazotz. Not every Arch-Devil was a master of illusion magic, but the presence they exuded was the important part anyway.

According to rotation, Thokod now had some time to maintain his own affairs, thankfully back in the form he found less disrespectful to the memory of his king. After that, he would need to lead another incursion.

The legions were in disarray at present, and many devils had started relying on their personal forces to form elite units rather than actually practice or train any of the large scale advanced tactics their bodies were literally made to use.

The entire command structure was in shambles, having nearly collapsed, and Thokod was working to rebuild the sixth legion he had been placed in charge of. He was not having an easy time with that, unit organization, training regiments, and even supply chains, had all nearly collapsed.

That much was to be expected though, when the supreme general of one of the largest forces in the universe disappears suddenly and leaves it unattended for months only to be picked up and rebuilt by multiple conflicting Arch-Devils, you’re going to have a bad time.

Thokod just wished he didn’t have to do this work himself. I mean, really, what happened to the Infernal Legates? Did his king really leave hell to fend for itself and take all seven of his generals with him at the same time?

Nevertheless, Legio VI Gula was not going to run itself, and keeping ten thousand vicious psychopaths from torturing each other long enough to get anything done really did need the heavy hand of an Arch-Devil.